More than 1.8 million pilgrims registered officially for the Hajj this year. But about 400,000 more tried to make the trip without the required documents, a senior Saudi official told news agency Agence France-Presse, speaking on the condition of anonymity. That would mean that nearly one in five of this year’s pilgrims bypassed the kingdom’s restrictions, including a security cordon around Mecca that locks down weeks before Hajj.
Several countries that recorded large numbers of pilgrim deaths have moved quickly to address the fallout over the past few days.
Muslim pilgrims gather at the top of the rocky hill known as the Mountain of Mercy, on the Plain of Arafat, during the annual Hajj pilgrimage, near the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.Credit: Rafiq Maqbool/AP
In Egypt, authorities said they would revoke the licenses of 16 companies that issued “unofficial” visas to hopeful pilgrims without providing them with adequate services.
In Tunisia, which counted more than 50 people among the dead, the president fired the country’s religious affairs minister.
And in Jordan, which recorded the deaths of at least 99 pilgrims, the public prosecutor opened an investigation into illegal Hajj routes and the people profiting from them.
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In interviews with The New York Times, Hajj tour operators, pilgrims and relatives of the dead said the number of undocumented pilgrims appeared to have been driven up by rising economic desperation in countries such as Egypt and Jordan. An official Hajj package can cost more than $7500 or $15,000, depending on a pilgrim’s country of origin – far beyond the means of many hoping to make the trip.
But they also described easily exploited loopholes in Saudi Arabia’s regulations that allowed undocumented pilgrims to travel to the kingdom with a tourist or visitor visa several weeks before Hajj. Once they arrive, they find a network of illegal brokers and smugglers who offer their services, take their money and sometimes abandon them to fend for themselves, they said.
Saudi officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Among those who fell into that trap was Safaa al-Tawab, from the Egyptian city of Luxor.
Al-Tawab, 55, had not been able to obtain a Hajj permit but found an Egyptian tour company that offered to take her for about $4500, said her brother, Ahmed al-Tawab.
He said she had not understood that she was violating the rules when she travelled to Saudi Arabia last month.
After she arrived, she told relatives that she had been put in inadequate housing and prevented from going outside by the tour operator. Although the company had promised to provide air-conditioned buses to transport the pilgrims around Mecca, she instead found herself walking for miles in the sun to reach the holy sites, her brother said.
His sister died midway through the pilgrimage, but when he contacted the tour company, it assured him that she was fine. When the company representative learned that her relatives knew about her death, he turned off his phone, al-Tawab said.
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“Pilgrims were deceived,” Mahmoud Qassem, a member of Egypt’s Parliament, said in a request for information from government officials.
“They left them all alone to face their own destiny,” Qassem said of the tour companies.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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